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Thursday, 19 April 2012

I woke up at the sound of raindrops. It was raining. The clouds were as dark as they could be. The ambience outside was, what other people would call, gloomy and dark. They would whine and complain. Darkness is “so - not - cool” for them. I don’t think so. It’s the darkness that makes the light of so much importance.Somebody asked me lately: “Why are your poems and stories so sad and grim? Why are they so dark?”I answered with a quote by Rammstein’s (a German band) rhythm guitarist Paul Landers:“Art should provoke and disturb people a bit. That is the whole point of doing art.”I thought for a while and an “Idea” struck me. Art is one of those fields where a man is neither scared nor ashamed of the darkness.I thought and thought and this is what came to my mind. A story… a conversation:

'Light is what we need. It is the darkest hour in the human history. Now what we need is a ray of hope.' Headline on the first page of a daily newspaper read.

“I don’t know what I would do without you?” said a lustrous lad with gold rimmed spectacles on his nose, sitting on a golden chair. The aura around him was dazzling. He was called LIGHT.

“Ah, it’s nothing. You know. It’s the only thing I am good at. Making people sad. Making people afraid.” Replied a voice with no source visible. Light called her his life … but she knew it’s not how this world looks upon her. She is and will always be loathed and feared as DARKNESS.

“No, you don’t understand.” said Light. “It is you and only you. You complete me. Imagine a world without you.”

“I, and I think every other face on the earth, wishes that. A world without me. A world without Darkness.” She smiled mockingly.

“No.” Light said trying to hold her hand but then withdrawing it soon. He knows he cannot touch her. “You are the one because of whom I am worthy.” He continued. “You are the reason behind me being so loved, so longed for. But I? I can’t give you anything. I am the very source of your demise. The moment I touch you, I will turn you into ‘nothing’.”

With a sigh and a grim smile Darkness said “I am nothing. I am null and void. Actually, you know it better than me, that, for every eye, I am non-existent.”

“I know. I know it very well and because of your nothingness there is something called Light. When you are there, even a single ray of mine is longed for. But they don’t know that Light has always longed for the Darkness. The Darkness, that resides in each and every heart, but they are ashamed of her. The Darkness, that marks the very existence of Light. The Darkness that is another face of human nature: be it sorrow, envy, lie, betrayal or love. You are part of them and they are part of you. You are omnipresent. You are selfless. You are the one who forces them to turn to me. And yet, you bear the burden of their cynicism and condemnation. I wonder, the reason one can’t see God is because one can’t see Darkness.”

“Shshhh. Don’t ever dare to compare me with God. You know it better than anyone else that I need to be hated so that this world can go on. We love each other but we need to tread paths separately. We know that our paths can’t meet, yet we have to go on for their sake. For the sake of the Earth. For the sake of them.”

Darkness was now sobbing. Light came forward and took her in his arms.

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The picture above is a combination of sketches (by black ball pen) drawn by my friend Vidushi Pandey and a picture taken by me. Following are the original pictures which were later photoshopped to suit the theme: